Reflections on Baroque

"In this reinterpretation of the Baroque, Robert Harbison offers new readings that stress its eccentric and tumultuous forms, in which a destabilized sense of reality is often projected onto the viewer. This strange, subjectively inclined world is manifested in such bizarre phenomena as the small stuccoed universe of Giacomo Serpotta, the Sacred Mounts of Piedmont and the grimacing heads of F.X. Messerschmidt." "From its beginnings in the seventeenth century, the Baroque embraced the whole of Catholic Europe and infiltrated Protestant England, Orthodox Russia and even Muslim Turkey. Architecture, paintings, poetry, music, natural science and new forms of piety all have their places on the Baroque map. Harbison explores their metamorphoses into later styles, particularly the Rococo, and, in an unexpected twist, pursues the Baroque idea into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, proposing provocative analyses of pastiches or imitations (in Der Rosenkavalier and the work of Aubrey Beardsley) or resemblances (deliberate or not) in Czech Cubism and Frank Gehry's architecture. Typical of Harbison's approach is the depth and breadth of its points of reference. Reflections on Baroque demonstrates that the Baroque impulse lives on in the 21st-century imagination."--Jacket. Read more... Abstract: This text offers a reinterpretation of the 17th-century Baroque style and the cultural and political interests that gave rise to it. Robert Harbison looks at the architecture, art, scenography, music, poetry and literature of the period and he explores the metamorphoses of Baroque ideas and works. Read more...

From its beginnings in the seventeenth century, the eccentric and tumultuous forms of the Baroque spread across not only Europe but colonial Latin America and Asia as well. With Reflections on Baroque, Robert Harbison brings together discussions of aesthetics, science, mysticism, politics, religion, and culture to offer a surprising reinterpretations of the baroque style and its influences and echoes into the twentieth century.

Reflections on Baroque Cover 1 Imprint page 5 Contents 6 Foreword 8 I. The Case for Disruption 14 II. Tormented Vision 46 III. The View from Above 73 IV. The End of Heroism 91 V. The World of Scenery 115 VI. Baroque Nature 140 VII. Colonial Baroque 177 VIII. Neo and Pseudo Baroque 205 IX. Baroque in the Twentieth Century 235 Notes 254 Acknowledgements 266 Photographic Acknowledgments 267 Index 268 Content: The case for disruption -- Tormented vision -- The view from above -- The end of heroism -- The world as scenery -- Baroque nature -- Colonial baroque -- Neo and Pseudo Baroque -- Baroque in the twentieth century. THE BAROQUE IS SET APART from what precedes it by an interest in movement above all, movement which is a frank exhibition of energy and escape from classical restraint.